WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Monday expanded its efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghan citizens from Afghanistan as Taliban violence increases ahead there of the US military pullout at the end of the month.

Current and former employees of the U.S. government and the NATO military operation who don’t meet the criteria for a dedicated program for such workers are also covered.

However, the move comes with a major caveat: applicants must leave Afghanistan to begin the adjudication process that may take 12-14 months in a third country, and the U.S. does not intend to support their departures or stays there.

Nevertheless, the State Department said the move will mean that “many thousands” of Afghans and their immediate families will now have the opportunity to be permanently resettled in the US as refugees.

It did not offer a more specific number of those who might be eligible for the programme.

“The US objective remains a peaceful, secure Afghanistan,” it said in a statement.

“However, in light of increased levels of Taliban violence, the US government is working to provide certain Afghans, including those who worked with the United States, the opportunity for refugee resettlement to the United States.”

The creation of a “Priority 2” category for Afghans within the US Refugee Admissions Program is intended for Afghans and their immediate families who “may be at risk due to their US affiliation” but aren’t able to get a Special Immigrant Visa because they did not work directly for the US government or didn’t hold their government jobs long enough.

To qualify for the Priority 2 category, Afghans must be nominated by a US government agency or by the most senior civilian US citizen employee of a US-based media outlet or nongovernmental organization.

The first group of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, most of whom served as translators or did other work for U.S. troops or diplomats, who have cleared security vetting arrived in the US on Friday.

That group of 221 people are among 2,500 who will be brought to the US in the coming days.

Another 4,000 SIV applicants, plus their families, who have not yet cleared the security screening are expected to be relocated to third countries ahead of the completion of the US withdrawal.

Roughly 20,000 Afghans have expressed interest in the programme.

WORLD: Germany will start offering Covid booster shots from September and make it easier for 12-to-17 year olds to get a jab, the health ministry said Monday, amid concerns about the spread of the Delta variant.

Mobile vaccination teams should be sent into care and nursing homes, the text says, to offer Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna booster shots to residents, regardless of which vaccine they had originally.

Doctors will also be able to administer booster jabs to those who qualify, including people with weakened immune systems.

A booster shot will also be offered to anyone who received the two-dose AstraZeneca or single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the document released by Spahn’s ministry said, “in the interests of preventative healthcare”.

Both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are viral vector vaccines, whereas the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use novel mRNA technology that has shown high efficacy in studies.

The ministers also agreed to make the coronavirus vaccine more widely available to over-12s, going a step further than the country’s STIKO vaccines regulator.

The regulator currently only recommends the coronavirus vaccine for 12-17 year olds if they have pre-existing conditions or live with people at high risk from Covid.

Although adolescents who do not fall into those categories are still allowed to get vaccinated, in consultation with their parents and doctors, the cautious STIKO guidance has slowed take-up.

Germany’s health ministers agreed on Monday to encourage vaccination among teens by opening all the country’s vaccination centres to 12-17 year olds, alongside the possibility to get vaccinated at regular clinics.

The ministers stressed that the jab was voluntary but said getting children and teenagers vaccinated could “contribute significantly to a safe return to classrooms after the summer holidays”.

Although Germany is currently enjoying relatively low infection rates compared with neighbouring countries, case numbers have been creeping up in recent weeks mainly because of the more contagious Delta variant.

There are also concerns about a slowdown in the country’s vaccination rate, with just over 52 percent of the population fully inoculated. 

Within the European Union, the European Medicines Agency has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots for all over-12s.

STIKO head Thomas Mertens told public radio MDR that the body was still waiting for data from longer-term studies before deciding on issuing a more general vaccine recommendation for over-12s.

The problem, he added, “is not so much the children’s vaccinations”.

What is needed to help suppress a fourth Covid wave in Germany “is a high vaccination rate among 18-to-59 year olds”.

WASHINGTON: The first flight evacuating Afghan interpreters and others who worked alongside Americans in Afghanistan landed early Friday at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to an internal US government document and a commercial flight tracking service.

An airliner carrying the 221 Afghans, including 57 children and 15 babies, according to the internal document obtained by The Associated Press, touched down at Washington Dulles International Airport in the early morning hours, according to tracking of the flight by FlightAware.

The evacuation flights, resettling former translators and others who fear retaliation from Afghanistan’s Taliban for having worked with American service members and civilians, are highlighting American uncertainty about how Afghanistan’s government and military will fare after the last US combat forces leave that country in coming weeks.

Family members are accompanying the interpreters and others on the flights out.

They were expected to stay at Fort Lee, Virginia for several days, U.S.officials said earlier this month.

Subsequent flights are due to bring more of the applicants who are farthest along in the process of getting visas, having already won approval and cleared security screening.

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden is asking states and localities to offer unvaccinated residents $100 to get their COVID-19 shots.

The cash reward for vaccination was one idea in Biden’s latest plan to boost lagging vaccination rates in many parts of the nation.

Rolled out Thursday, the core of his new plan is a requirement for federal workers to disclose their vaccination status to their agencies.

Biden is pointing to anecdotal evidence that a $100 reward will get results.

The White House says the Kroger grocery store chain tried it and saw vaccination rates jump to 75% from 50% among employees.

New Mexico, Ohio and Colorado have also experimented with the idea.

Biden says states and localities can use money from his COVID relief law to pay for the incentive programmes.

TOKYO: Japanese officials sounded an alarm on Thursday, July 29, 2021, after Tokyo reported record-breaking coronavirus cases for two straight days with the Olympics well underway. 

“We have never experienced the expansion of the infections of this magnitude,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters. He said the new cases were soaring not only in the Tokyo area but across the country. 

Tokyo reported 3,177 new cases on Wednesday, up from 2,848 on Tuesday, setting an all-time high and exceeding 3,000 for the first time. 

Japan has kept its cases and deaths lower than many other countries, but its seven-day rolling average is growing and now stands at 28 per 100,000 people nationwide and 88 in Tokyo, according to the Health Ministry. This compares to 18.5 in the United States, 48 in Britain and 2.8 in India, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“While almost nothing is helping to slow the infections, there are many factors that can accelerate them,” said Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top government medical adviser, noting the Olympics and summer vacation. “The biggest risk is the lack of a sense of crisis and without it, the infections will further expand and put medical systems under severe strain.”

Tokyo has been under its fourth state of emergency since July 12, ahead of the Olympics, which began last Friday despite widespread public opposition and concern that they Games could worsen the outbreak.

People are still roaming the streets despite stay-at-home requests, making the measures largely ineffective at a time the more infectious delta strain is spreading, he said. “We have never seen the infections spread so rapidly.”

Alarmed by the surge in Tokyo, the governors of three prefectures adjacent to the capital said they plan to ask Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to place their areas under the state of emergency too. 

Experts say Tokyo’s surge is being propelled by the delta variant of the virus and there is no evidence of the disease being transmitted from Olympic participants to the general public.

Tokyo officials said Thursday that two foreign Olympic athletes are currently hospitalized and 38 others are self-isolating at designated hotels in the city. Gov. Yuriko Koike urged the organizers to make sure not to burden Tokyo’s hospitals. 

Nationwide, Japan reported more than 9,500 confirmed cases, a new record, on Wednesday for a total of about 892,000, with about 15,000 deaths.

As of Wednesday, 26.3% of the Japanese population has been fully vaccinated. The percentage of the elderly who are fully vaccinated is 70%, or 24.8 million people.

WELLINGTON: New Zealand on Monday agreed to repatriate an alleged Islamic State militant and her two young children, who have been detained in Turkey since February.

The decision follows a bitter dispute with Australia over which country needed to shoulder responsibility for the woman, who had been a dual citizen of both countries until Australia stripped her citizenship under its anti-terrorism laws.

The woman and her children were arrested when they tried to illegally cross from Syria into Turkey, according to Turkey’s Defense Ministry. Turkey identified her only by her initials, S.A., while New Zealand media say she is Suhayra Aden, who was 26 at the time of her arrest.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealand had taken into account its international responsibilities and could not remove citizenship from anybody if it left them stateless.

“I made very strong representations to Australia that she should be permitted to return there. Her family moved to Australia when she was 6 and she grew up there before departing for Syria in 2014 on an Australian passport,” Ardern said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Australia would not reverse the cancellation of citizenship.”

Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the woman lost her citizenship as a result of her own actions, and that ending citizenship for dual nationals engaged in terrorist conduct was an integral part of Australia’s response to terrorist threats.

“The government’s first priority is always to protect the Australian community,” Andrews said in a statement. 

Ardern said the safety and wellbeing of New Zealanders was the government’s paramount concern. She said there had been extensive planning with the police and other agencies. 

“I can assure people great care is being taken as to how the woman and her young children are returned to New Zealand and how they will be managed in a way that minimizes any risk for New Zealanders,” Ardern said.

Authorities declined to say when the family would be repatriated, citing legal and security concerns.

Ardern said anybody suspected of being associated with a terrorist group should expect to be investigated under New Zealand laws, although the case remained a matter for the police. 

New Zealand police confirmed an investigation was underway but declined further comment on whether the woman would face any criminal charges.

Beijing: China’s military has blasted a dam to release floodwaters threatening one of its most heavily populated provinces, as the death toll in widespread flooding rose to at least 25.

The dam operation was carried out late Tuesday night in the city of Luoyang, just as severe flooding overwhelmed the Henan provincial capital of Zhengzhou, trapping residents in the subway system and stranding them at schools, apartments and offices.

Another seven people were reported missing, provincial officials said at a news conference.

A video posted on Twitter by news site The Paper showed subway passengers standing in chest-high muddy brown water as torrents raged in the tunnel outside. Transport and work have been disrupted throughout the province, with rain turning streets into rapidly flowing rivers, washing away cars and rising into people’s homes.

At least 10 trains carrying about 10,000 passengers were halted, including three for more than 40 hours, according to Caixin, a business news magazine.

A blackout shut down ventilators at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, forcing staff to use hand-pumped airbags to help patients breathe, according to the city’s Communist Party committee. It said more than 600 patients were being transferred to other hospitals.

The precise times and locations of the deaths and disappearances weren’t immediately clear, although the province said more than 100,000 people have been evacuated to safety.

Henan province has many cultural sites and is a major base for industry and agriculture. It is crisscrossed by multiple waterways, many of them linked to the Yellow River, which has a long history of bursting its banks during periods of intensive rainfall.

State media on Wednesday showed waters at waist height, with rain still coming down.

To the north of Zhengzhou, the famed Shaolin Temple, known for its Buddhist monks’ mastery of martial arts, was also badly hit.

China routinely experiences floods during the summer, but the growth of cities and conversion of farmland into subdivisions has worsened the impact of such events. 

Kathmandu: Nepal’s new Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Sunday comfortably won a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives, ensuring continuity of the twice dissolved lower house of Parliament for the remaining duration.

Deuba, the 75-year-old chief of the Nepali Congress who was appointed as the prime minister as per the Article 76(5) of the Constitution on July 12 following Supreme Court’s intervention, secured 165 votes in the 275-member house on Sunday.

A total of 136 votes were required for Deuba to win Parliament’s confidence.

As many as 249 lawmakers participated in the voting process and 83 of them voted against Deuba while one lawmaker remained neutral.

“I hereby declare that the motion of the vote of confidence tabled by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has been endorsed with a majority, House Speaker Agni Sapkota announced.

The proposal for the vote of trust was registered in the Parliament Secretariat on Sunday, the very first day of the session of the reinstated lower house.

Previously, Deuba has served as the prime minister on four occasions; first from 1995 to 1997, then from 2001 to 2002, again from 2004 to 2005, and from 2017 to 2018.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Deuba on his success.

“Congratulations Prime Minister @DeubaSherbdr and best wishes for a successful tenure. I look forward to working with you to further enhance our unique partnership in all sectors, and strengthen our deep-rooted people-to-people ties,” Modi tweeted.

Deuba took the oath of office and secrecy for a record fifth time on July 13, a day after a five-member Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana reinstated the dissolved House of Representatives for the second time in five months.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari had dissolved the lower house for the second time in five months on May 22 at the recommendation of Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli and announced snap elections on November 12 and November 19.

Deuba had staked the claim to form the government as per the Article 76(5) with the support of 149 lawmakers but President Bhandari had invalidated the claim, along with that made by Oli saying both claims were insufficient.

After the apex court’s intervention, President Bhandari had summoned the meeting of both the Houses of the Parliament on Sunday.

In the lower house of Parliament, the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) has 61 members while its coalition partner CPN (Maoist Center) has 48 members, excluding Speaker Sapkota.

The main Opposition CPN-UML, which is Oli’s party, has 121 members in the lower house, the JSP has 32 members and the other three fringe parties have a member each. There is an independent lawmaker as well.

The Nepali Congress, CPN Maoist Centre and Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal lawmakers voted in favour of Deuba. The Thakur-Mahato faction of the JSP-N also decided to support Deuba at the last minute.

Close to a dozen lawmakers of the UML left the House after Deuba’s victory was certain. However, the remaining 22 lawmakers, including Madhav Kumar Nepal himself, voted for Deuba.

Interestingly, as many as 8 lawmakers from the Oli faction voted in Deuba’s favour. All in all, around 30 lawmakers from the opposition party defied the party whip to vote against Deuba.

Former prime minister and senior leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) Jhalanath Khanal, who is undergoing treatment at a hospital in New Delhi, had issued a statement, asking his party’s lawmakers to vote in favour of Deuba.

With his victory, Deuba is set to remain prime minister for a year and a half, until elections are held.

Nepal plunged into a political crisis on December 20 last year after President Bhandari dissolved the House and announced fresh elections on April 30 and May 10 at the recommendation of Prime Minister Oli, amidst a tussle for power within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP).

On February 23, the apex court reinstated the dissolved House of Representatives, in a setback to embattled Prime Minister Oli who was preparing for snap polls.

New Delhi: Most three-years-old may find it difficult to even form a sentence, but not child prodigy Chryseis Knight who holds the rare distinction of being one of the youngest authors in the world.

“The Great Big Lion”, drawn and written by child prodigy Knight, is a story about lion and two children. It talks about friendship, inclusivity, wildlife conservation and the world of imagination.

Earlier published independently abroad, the book was released on Monday for the first time in India under Penguin Random House India’s ‘Puffin’ imprint.

Knight, who is currently residing in Canada, learnt how to read at the age of one, started writing the story of “The Great Big Lion” in her notebook when she was three years old. She then shared it with her family and became determined to do the artwork with the motivation of getting the book published.

Now seven-years-old, she hopes to inspire children all around the world to embrace the magic in books.

“Tremendously excited that we are publishing this unique book that was written and illustrated by Chryseis when she was merely three! Her writings have an endearing quality; it speaks to children and resonates with them, and the themes she covers are wide-ranging: from wildlife conservation to developing empathy. It is not surprising that she was inducted into Mensa at age two for her linguistic talents. She’s exceptionally gifted and we look forward to her writing career as she grows up,” said Arpita Nath, commissioning editor, Penguin Random House.

New Delhi: Ahead of a likely organisational and government reshuffle in Punjab, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday met poll strategist Prashant Kishor at his residence.

Other party leaders like Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, AICC general secretary Punjab-in-charge Harish Rawat and KC Venugopal were also present during the meeting where they are learnt to have discussed the party’s overhaul in Punjab and efforts to end factionalism in the state unit ahead of assembly elections.

Kishor had earlier met Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on the impending changes in the Punjab Congress.

Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu, who have been at loggerheads, have made a number of public statements against each other in recent months. Amid the tiff, the Gandhis have met the Punjab chief minister and Sidhu separately.

There was no official word on what was discussed at the meeting with Kishor which lasted about an hour, but sources said the new Punjab Congress body would be announced in the next few days and the discussions were focused on it.

There have been hectic deliberations over the past few days over the likely changes in the Punjab government and the party’s state unit.

Both Sidhu and Amarinder Singh have also met the three-member AICC panel headed by Mallikarjun Kharge. The panel had earlier submitted its report to the Congress chief with its recommendations.

The CM had then said any decision taken by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi would be acceptable to him and the party.

The role for Sidhu in the organisation has remained a sticking point from the beginning as he is keen on the post of PCC chief, which is not acceptable to the chief minister, according to party sources.